TORONTO — Basketball parlance will label the Suns’ Friday night loss at Toronto as a one-possession game because of a chance to tie in the final seconds even though they ultimately lost by four.

That’s a lie. The Suns fell to 7-10 because of dozens of possessions. Even the final minute was full of regrets as the Suns missed five shots in the paint or at the rim to take a lead or tie before letting Toronto snap its six-game skid with a 101-97 win at Air Canada Centre.

The Suns played their best defense in the final five minutes, allowing the Raptors (4-14) to make only one field goal. Trailing 98-97, the Suns gave Coach Alvin Gentry their undivided attention because they can’t be sure who is going to be asked to win a game late or who will be on the floor. Nobody has established himself, and Michael Beasley, who they banked on being a go-to guy, often sits in crunch time because of his defensive shortcomings.

Gentry turned to Luis Scola, seldom a go-to guy in Houston, because of his experience. Scola missed a good look at a 6-foot post hook with 36 seconds, but Marcin Gortat had an unmolested chance at a tap-in and missed with 33 seconds.

“I really thought it was going in,” Gortat said. “I swear I saw it inside the basket. For some reason, it came out. It was a little message from the gods that we have to keep fighting a little more.”

The Suns retained possession after Gortat’s miss and went back to Scola on the same play, but he missed a lean-in post against Andrea Bargnani with 17 seconds to go. Toronto’s Kyle Lowry bailed the Suns out by missing one of two free throws for a 99-97 lead with 14.8 seconds to go.

This time, Gentry ran a play that would give Jared Dudley an early look at a 3-pointer and then go to Shannon Brown at the top to drive. Mickael Pietrus, a former Sun playing on his first day with Toronto, recognized the play and denied Dudley’s shot.

Brown got the ball at the arc and slithered through the Raptors to the rim just as he had seconds earlier to cut the lead to one. But like Beasley’s game-ending layup to tie at Philadelphia on Sunday, Brown missed with three seconds to go.

“Next time, I just got to take it stronger,” said Brown, who turned 27 on Thursday. “No excuses. “

It was not just those five shots.

It was moments earlier when Goran Dragic got in the air with nowhere to go and essentially threw an outlet pass for an Amir Johnson dunk and Toronto’s 98-95 lead.

It was giving up 61 points in the middle quarters, including a 3-poitner at the end of the first half and a 3-point play at the end of the third quarter.

It was continuing their league-worst 3-point defense, allowing Toronto to make eight of 14 3s.

It was ruining their much-improved ball movement with 14 turnovers and getting beat on the board on one of every four of Raptors misses.

“We’ve got to go through some of this,” said Dudley, whose 14 points shared the team lead with Gortat and Brown. “We get wins at New York and Memphis, and it’d be a pretty good trip. Usually, it takes a while for a young team to win. We don’t want to do that, but you’ve got to take your lumps.”

The Suns started well with former Rockets guards Dragic and Lowry squaring off entertainingly until the Suns’ rhythm was broken with Dragic’s second foul.

“He’s a competitive guy and me too,” Dragic said. “A lot of times in Houston were like that. We’re good friends but when it’s business, it’s business. If you don’t play for the same team, you’re not friends.”

The Suns wound up losing at Toronto for the first time since they last played there without Steve Nash in January 2004. Jermaine O’Neal’s fear of bad teams seeing the Suns as a get-well opponent came true again and the Suns were talking regrets while they should have at least been still playing in overtime.

The response from embarrassingly losing by 40 at Detroit was appropriately solid for an early 10-point lead but failing to finish puts them in danger of coming home on a four-game losing streak.

The Suns next go to New York, which is undefeated at home, and Memphis, the West’s top team.

“When things go wrong, all the little things go to the other side,” Scola said. “We need to change the dynamic. We need to change our attitude. We need to change our minds.”

Why the Suns lost: The Suns blew chances in the clutch because they don’t know who their clutch guy is or don’t have one. But they lost the game long before that, wasting a great first quarter by giving up 61 points in the middle quarters. The Suns defense let another team shoot far better, especially on 3-pointers, than it usually does and gave up huge quarter-ending momentum plays — a buzzer 3-pointer to end the first half when it had a foul to give a 3-point play on a second-shot to end the third quarter.

View from press row: The Suns home opener was strange. When the Lakers come to Phoenix, it will get extremely weird. Beyond those situations, there is no setting more strikingly different without Steve Nash than a Suns game at Toronto. Since he returned to Phoenix in 2004, the Suns never lost at Air Canada Centre, which sounded like US Airways Center, had dozens of reporters talking to him before games and had him talking to hundreds of Canadian kids after games.

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